India-ASEAN

Over a period of five years, India and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) negotiated a bilateral free trade agreement — with plenty of difficulty.

Under their initial bilateral framework agreement, signed in Bali on 8 October 2003, the India-ASEAN FTA for goods was supposed to be finalised by 30 June 2005. Negotiations on services would start in 2005 and end in 2007.

After a year’s delay, discussions ground to a halt in June 2006 when India released its ’negative list’ of items to be excluded from tariff reductions — with 900 products, both industrial and agricultural, figuring on the list. (This was down from India’s initial negative list of 1,410 items.) India’s agriculture ministry, in particular, was arguing hard to exclude commodities like rubber, pepper, tea, coffee and palm oil from the deal. Rules of origin have been the other thorny issue.

Two months later, in August 2006, Delhi issued a revised list, pruned down to 560 items. However, tremendous fears about the impacts of the India-ASEAN FTA on farmers continued to rattle the discussion.

By early 2007, in the midst of the new biofuels boom, palm oil became a central blockage point as Indonesia and Malaysia, both top palm oil exporters, struggled to get India to lower its tariffs.

On 28 August 2008, a deal was finally concluded. The agreement was signed in 2009 and took effect (trade in goods) with 5 of the countries and India in January 2010, (Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Myanmar and Thailand). India is pushing – without much apparent process – for a services liberalization deal with the ASEAN countries.

last update: May 2012

Read more

Read less

Articles

On the occasion of 25th anniversary of country’s relationship with 10-nation ASEAN grouping, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has strongly pitched for Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), saying it will further strengthen cooperation and economic integration in the region.

India’s free trade agreement (FTA) in services and investments with 10-member ASEAN Grouping will come into force from July this year, paving the way for freer movement of professionals and further investment opportunities.

If you thought India’s services trade agreement with Asean is going to open the doors for Indian professionals to work in the 10-member trading bloc, you may be in for a surprise. Similar agreements with Japan and South Korea — which the government said will help Indian nurses, architects and even yoga professionals have not resulted in any visas.

Barely a month after the government sealed the trade pact in services and investments with the Asean, an internal assessment of the deal that has been placed before the Cabinet Secretariat concludes that India has got “almost nothing” by signing the agreement.

The ASEAN-India Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in Services and Investment is one step closer to implementation following approval by Thailand’s Ministry of Commerce to accept the terms outlined in the region-wide agreement.

India has completed the internal process for signing the much-waited free trade agreement in services and investments with ASEAN which is set to significantly boost its economic engagement with the 10-nation grouping.

The idea of a Mekong-India Economic Corridor — a network of land and sea infrastructure connecting India, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam — is gaining traction with the upcoming signing of the India-ASEAN services and investment deal.

India and the 10-nation ASEAN are set to formally sign a free trade agreement on services and investments by the end of 2013 and implement the ambitious agreement by July 2014, a top official said Monday.

bilaterals.org is a collaborative space to share information and support movements struggling against bilateral trade and investment deals which serve corporations, not people. Multilingual. Global. No one owns it. Open publishing. Get involved.